Fix basic photo mistakes

May 15, 2015

Transcript

Whether you use a phone or s DSLR there are gonna be times when you make mistakes with your photography, especially when you're starting out.
Here are the top three mistakes the beginners make and how to fix them.
First up is getting your horizon crooked.
This is a very easy fix.
In your smartphone all you need to do is turn on the grid overlay option before you take the photo.
For iPhone head to settings, then photos and camera and toggle the grid switch.
On Android it's pretty similar but depending on your phone you'll need to go into the settings menu.
And turn on the grid icon.
If you have a DSLR though, it is a similar process, you can either turn on the grid lines or if your DSLR has it a virtual horizon option so you can have an overlay of the horizon.
In real time when you're using live view.
Otherwise, if you want to do it in post-processing, simply open up your favorite app and then tilt the canvas until everything is straight.
The second mistake that a lot of photographers make when they're first starting out is the photos appear either too bright or too dark.
This is because sometimes your camera meter can't read the light like your eye can and either under or over exposes the situation.
Now fortunately there is a really easy fix.
All you have to do is look for the exposure compensation slider in your phone app On iPhone all you need to do is press and hold the screen, a box will come up, and then toggle the slider up and down.
On Android, just simply look for the exposure slider, and change the value to either a positive 1, if you wanna make the photo brighter, or to negative 1 if you wanna make it darker.
On a DSLR, the same principle applies.
Just look for the Exposure Compensation button and make your adjustments.
Mistake number three is white balance.
Do your photos sometimes have weird color casts?
Then your white balance is probably wrong.
Fortunately, it's a really simple fix.
In your phone's camera app, all you need to do is look for a White Balance option and then set it to a more appropriate appropriate value, or alternatively, you have a DSLR, you can actually take a custom white balance reading.
All you need is to grab a white card or a grey card.
Take a photo of it in the same lighting condition as your subject.
And look for a custom white balance option in your DSLR menu
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Select that photo of the white card that you took.
And then you'll have the correct white balance for the situation.
Or, of course, you can always change the white balance in post-production.
Those are some simple solutions for problems that beginner photographers often make.
If you wanna check out the full list, you can can find it on.
cnet.com/howto.
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